Keynote
“Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill.”—Time
Book Title
It's Fine By Me
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- “Petterson is remarkably gifted . . . . His sentences yearn to fly away into poetry; it is rare to find prose at once so exact and so vague.”—James Wood, The New Yorker
Body
Fans of Per Petterson’s other books in English will be delighted by this opportunity to observe Arvid Jansen in his youth from a fresh perspective. In It’s Fine By Me, Arvid befriends a boy named Audun. On Audun’s first day of school he refuses to talk or take off his sunglasses; there are stories he would prefer to keep to himself. Audun lives with his mother in a working-class district of Oslo. He delivers newspapers and talks for hours about Jack London and Ernest Hemingway with Arvid. But he’s not sure that school is the right path for him and feels that life holds other possibilities. Sometimes tender, sometimes brutal, It’s Fine By Me is a brilliant novel from the acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses and I Curse the River of Time.
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About the Author
Credit: Baard Henriksen
Praise
- “Fans of Petterson will recognize his confident prose, as well as his concern with solitude and the essential privacy of experience, but one need not be familiar with the author’s oeuvre to appreciate his precise storytelling. Petterson’s achievement in this work lies in conveying the passionate alienation of a young man caught between a childish need for protection and a powerful desire to protect.”—Publishers Weekly
- “[A] taut coming-of-age tale. . . . The melancholy story, and the superb writing that propels it, are both raw and honest.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
- "With biting humor and sharp, Hemingway-like prose, this bildungsroman offers more light and hope than later Petterson novels, perhaps reflecting the author's younger, more idealistic self. Perfect for YA crossover or an intergenerational book discussion."—Library Journal
- “A fascinating look inside the mind of one young man. . . . Mostly heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful, this is a gem of a novel about how men think . . . and don’t.”—Anne Holman, The King’s English
